cleaning ice makers water system?

[pdecat]

Lots of people report the need to clean their water system because of skunky water. I never understood how those people clean their ice maker.
It is impossible to really flush because it uses so little water compared to the volume in its feed hose and the slow cycle rate. It seems to me that the bad water would remain in the feed line and ice maker even after shocking the rest of the system yet I have never read of anyone complaining about bad ice. How is that possible? Even using special water doesn't solve the dirty system problem and with the low flow in icemakers they would seem to be the most sensitive to water going bad, especially in hot climates.

 

[Vic Willman]

Most of the people who have that problem add a filter in the supply water line to the icemaker.

 

[pdecat]

A filter will keep new crap out of the lines but in my experience stuff grows in all the lines, even post filter lines, in hot weather unless the water is flowing very regularly. Drinking more has it's benefits.

 

[Vic Willman]

Generally, if you throw out the first 2 or 3 loads of ice when you fire it up on a Friday night, you should be OK from then on. You need to get the water circulating through the machine. It takes about 2 batches of cubes to replace the water that is laying in the lines. If you wait until 3 batches have ejected, that should do it.